


phantoms underneath your skin

by madnessiseverything



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast-centric, Dermatillomania, Kinda, depersonalization/derealization, episode 49 spoilers just in case, mild body horror, not explicitly done but mentioned, self harm ideation, this is me projecting a lot onto caleb so its a bit of a mess, this was both cathartic and incredibly hard to write, written while in sensory hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-25 20:25:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessiseverything/pseuds/madnessiseverything
Summary: there are days where he wants to rip his own arms off. days where his skin crawls, where phantom crystals shift under it, where he wants to dig deep inside and tear it all out, make it stop. days where nothing makes the deep feeling of wrong go away. he doesn't like casting on those days, where everything feels too much and yet not enough, no, never enough. where he feels like his hands need to be gone from his body, where his arms feel foreign and yet too familiar.or the one where caleb's arms and hands don't always work as well as he wants them to.





	phantoms underneath your skin

**Author's Note:**

> so i haven't posted sth for cr in a tick, huh? and of course i drop back in with some hardcore projecting. this was written while in absolute sensory hell, whoops :D. hope you enjoy!

there are days where he wants to rip his own arms off. days where his skin crawls, where phantom crystals shift under it, where he wants to dig deep inside and tear it all out,  _ make it stop _ . days, where nothing makes the deep feeling of  _ wrong _ go away. 

 

he doesn't like casting on those days, where everything feels  _ too much _ and yet not enough, no, never enough. where he feels like his hands need to be gone from his body, where his arms feel foreign and yet too familiar. magic travels through his veins and on these days he can't -  _ can't _ \- deal with the feeling of something moving inside of him. he can't. it will make him dig blunt fingernails into skin,  _ too much, too much, stop touching _ yet never enough  _ pressure _ . he hates those days.

 

both touch and the absence of it drive him crazy on those days, the feeling of his clothes, his wraps against his skin a horrid mix of too much, too little, never enough yet always cripplingly overwhelming. his fingers will tingle, shake, make him feel the need to smash them into pieces so they will  _ stop.  _ he will clench his fists to get the pressure he knows he craves only to quickly release at the feeling of  _ no wrong, too much, too much, stop, stop, stopstopstopstop-  _ he shakes his hands and curses into the wind, wishing for nothing more than the blissful dark of unconsciousness. his hands are sweaty and skin sticks to skin and gods, does he want to rip it all off. the pulse he can feel in his palms makes him want to sob.

 

some of these days he cannot stand to even hold his quill, cannot stand the position of his hands where his palm folds in ever so slightly, where skin meets other skin and makes him want to throw his hand into the nearest tree to feel anything other than  _ this, anything, anything please, pleasepleaseplease _ . His knuckles are scarred from bark, memories of old pain blissful whenever his hands refuse to do their one job. 

 

he grows angry on these days, shaky and irrational. frumpkin’s soft comfort becomes something he is unable to indulge, something that makes his hands tingle. he hates it. his most trusted tools, second only to his brain, refusing to work, long gone crystals crippling his arms, making his magic the worst experiences in his solitude. it feels foreign, alien in his body, twisting under his skin, pulling at the scars. gods, he wishes for nothing more than it all to stop. he finds himself craving the asylum’s nothingness, sometimes. those thoughts are immediately followed with icy terror swirling in his gut, but they appear in his head nonetheless, whenever his arms, hands, everything starts to feel wrong. 

 

he can never figure out what causes it, not with all his intellect and research. it frustrates him, to have something that he cannot explain, cannot place. words fail him when he tries to explain it to nott on a morning where she finds him shaking his hands in a desperate attempt to get them to just  _ stop, please. _ the explanations stick to his tongue and nott doesn’t push when his breath stutters, when he slaps his hands against the cold mud surrounding their campsite. caleb can’t quantify how grateful he is. nott learns not to touch his arms or hands on the bad days, learns to talk and talk and talk until his brain quiets down enough for the anger to dissolve. she is so patient, if not quite understanding of the troubles it causes him. caleb doesn’t fault her. and when he finds himself panicking when his hands refuse to work, refuse to wind the string for alarm, refuse to let him touch it for more than a second, nott is there to talk him through the motions he showed her precisely for moments like this.

 

being with the mighty nein makes it harder, when his magic, his arms and hands are required every day, without fail. magic doesn’t really leave his veins anymore, rests underneath his skin, ready to spill out of his hands. he is grateful, so grateful that it has not abandoned him, yet he knows that on the bad days it will destroy him. and it does. it makes him curl up and sob when he can’t get the feeling of  _ wrong, wrong, WRONG  _ to leave his arms and hands, when his nails scrape against the wraps that are suffocating his arms, because surely they must be the cause. when his nails catch scars it gets worse, the reminders bringing the crystals back up to push and twist and make his breath stutter. 

 

the nein push in ways nott doesn’t, ask questions he doesn’t have responses to, come closer when he pulls away. it makes him want to scream, to let his throat tear apart with the sound, if it would make the feeling go away, if it would make them leave him alone on the days. nott tries, she does, but by the gods, the nein need caleb’s magic sometimes and he  _ knows _ , knows that he relies on it as much as they do on him. 

 

he knows that he cannot check out during battles, no matter how much the motions make him want to throw his arms into the path of the party’s blows, to have fjord or yasha or jester cut through them, have beau smash them to pieces. he knows that he has to remain useful. his arms and hands don’t care much for what he knows. he bites through his lip, tastes iron and keeps fighting. he will deal with it after the battle, he tells himself. he will not give into his brain’s urges to remove the problem, to remove his tools. the nein will understand, will let him rest, will look the other way while he presses his hands into cavern walls, whispering pleas for it all to stop. beauregard will tilt her head but leave him to it and by the gods, caleb will remain useful, he promises. 

 

the bad days never go away, regardless of his promises. after all, his body and brain have shown him time and time again that they do not care about his wishes. 

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to drop by my [cr twitter](https://twitter.com/nottanycritter) and [cr tumblr](https://nottanothercritter.tumblr.com/) to yell about critical role :D


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